


Iphigenia

by ReganX



Category: The Tudors
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReganX/pseuds/ReganX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"His name was Agamemnon… He did a very bad thing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This story contains references to certain things that readers may find disturbing or offensive, including murder. If this is likely to offend or upset you, please do not read any further.

The King found her body in the morning.

Her ladies were already there, tidying the apartment and laying out her breakfast but, as they heard no sound of stirring coming from her bedchamber, there was not one among their number who wanted to be the one to go in to wake her so they just stayed outside, keeping their voices low and moving as silently as possible, waiting for her to wake and to summon them to attend her.

He could imagine that they were in no hurry to wait on her, even if she was still Queen.

Even those among her ladies who were not there when the King, terrible and terrifying in his anger, told her that he could see that he would get no boys by her heard of it from the others, who were so eager to spread gossip and so careless of the pain that the lady they served was enduring, and they could all see what this would mean for her, knowing that a woman who was raised to be Queen at the King's pleasure could also be cast down if that was his wish, more quickly and more easily than she was raised, and none of them wanted to fall with her.

They left her alone the previous evening, not one of them willing to see through her assurances that she had all she needed and that she would rather be alone, that they should attend the revels. Not one of them was willing to recognize that she needed their company, even if she couldn't admit that she needed it, that she needed to have somebody nearby with whom she could speak, if only to distract herself from the fears that preyed on her by conversing on other matters.

Instead, they were content to leave her to her solitude.

Two years ago, it would have been unthinkable for her to be left alone.

Two years ago, her suggestion that they should leave her alone in the darkness of her apartment to fend for herself while they hastened downstairs to enjoy the banquet laid out for the court's supper, and the music and dancing afterwards, would have been met with polite and deferential but determined assurances that they would much prefer to remain with her, just in case she needed them to serve her, and those Anne insisted on dismissing would have felt slighted rather than relieved to be set at liberty, disgruntled to think that she did not want them around her.

Two years ago, they would all have been falling over themselves to show that they were the most devoted ladies-in-waiting that any Queen ever had attending on her in the hopes of winning her favour, which could bring them many benefits... but two years ago, things were different.

Two years ago, she was healthily pregnant with her second child and, although the first child was only a girl – something that nobody could deny was a disappointment to her parents, who had anticipated a prince, and needed one to prove to the world that theirs was a union blessed by God – she was beautiful and healthy and so perfect that nobody could doubt that her brother would be a Prince with whom nobody could find fault, least of all the King who waited so long for him and who would celebrate his birth as one would celebrate a miracle.

Then she lost the baby.

He didn't know if she did something to kill the baby, if she became careless and ate something that her physician forbade or took part in activities that were so strenuous that the precious burden she carried was harmed by them, or if an enemy poisoned her to destroy the Prince before he was born or if she was just unlucky but, whatever the reason, the result was the same.

Things were never truly well between her and the King since then, even though they both tried to pretend that all was well, and there were few at court who couldn't see it.

The night before, her ladies-in-waiting, women singled out for the honour of serving their Queen and who swore an oath to be loyal to her and diligent in their duties, were all too eager to leave her apartment so that they might go downstairs, skipping away without a backward glance.

He saw with his own eyes how many of them approached Mistress Seymour, to compliment her on her gown and to admire the few pieces of jewellery she wore, as though they thought that her frumpy country gowns and plain adornments were more beautiful that Anne's exquisite gowns or the jewels that always looked so perfect on her, and which she wore so naturally, as though they belonged on her person, as much a part of her as her eyes or her hair. Even jewels crafted for other Queens, centuries before Anne was born, looked like they were made just for her.

When he first saw Mistress Seymour paraded around on the arm of her proud father, who smiled complacently at each compliment made to his undeserving daughter, he believed that Sir John Seymour, who could surely afford to provide finer gowns than that for his girl even if he was far from being the richest man at court, as well as being a man burdened with an over-large family of sons and daughters to support, encouraged his daughter to dress with relative simplicity and modesty next to the other ladies of the court to encourage the King to think of this unremarkable specimen of womanhood as something special, a modest and pure maiden who was utterly free of the vanity that was so common among the ladies of the court.

Now, however, while he did not doubt that this was Sir John's intention, and likely Mistress Seymour's too, he was certain that their strategy was also motivated by their awareness of the fact that, if the woman dressed in the rich garb of a court lady, it would be evident to all that such a creature was never born to be a great lady, let alone a Queen.

Sir John's ambition for his family had seemingly blinded him to the fact that a woman like his daughter was born to be a country matron, a woman whose house would be her world. Mistress Seymour was born to govern a kitchen, stillroom, laundry, dairy and nursery, not a royal court, and her father should have had the sense to recognize the role for which she was suited instead of being such a fool as to think that his daughter could ever be fit for anything more than that.

Were she to wear a gown like Anne's, she would look more foolish and more out of place than a child wearing its mother's clothes, or a serving wench who snuck a gown from her mistress' wardrobe but who gave away her common birth with every gesture and every word.

Mistress Seymour was not fit to wash out his daughter's chamber pot, let alone attend her as a lady-in-waiting, and the idea of her taking Anne's place as Queen was repugnant but, as he sat in the Great Hall watching the courtiers, even those whose high status would ordinarily have meant that a Seymour was so far beneath their notice that they would never take the trouble to bid them 'good day', flock to the woman, he could see the future as clearly as if it was spread out before him and knew that it did not lie in his power to save his daughter and his family.

If the King wanted to be free of Anne, he would find a way to do it.

Even if her family made it clear to him that they would not support any attempt she made to thwart his attempts to get rid of her, even if they supported him in his quest for an annulment by inventing details of a prior betrothal agreed upon for Anne that would render her union with the King unlawful, it would not be enough to salvage their position at court, and all they had gained.

Once the King managed to make Mistress Seymour his Queen, her family would hover around the couple like flies buzzing around a carcass, parasites eager to reap the rewards they would feel was their due as they were kin to the creature who managed to win the King away from his Queen. If they possessed an ounce of sense between them, they would know that they needed to make haste to reap whatever rewards they could before the King's infatuation died, as it inevitably would, and he realized, to his disgust, what kind of woman they had allowed him to marry.

The Boleyns would no longer be in the ascendancy at court, their good will cultivated by those seeking advancement or who wished them to speak to the King on their behalf.

It would be the time of the Seymours, to whose side virtually every courtier would flock, assuring them of their friendship and support, making it clear that, if they had previously sought the friendship of the Boleyns, they had done so only as a matter of policy, and were pleased to see Anne replaced by Mistress Seymour. Those who swore to uphold Elizabeth as heir would quickly transfer their loyalty to Mistress Seymour's brats, or to the Lady Mary, if the Queen advanced the cause of her elder stepdaughter at little Elizabeth's expense.

He would be left with the unpalatable choice of either seeking the favour of the family who displaced his, bowing and scraping before the creature who supplanted his daughter, pretending that she was England's true Queen and that any puling brats she bore were the true heirs, or hiding away at Hever Castle, cut off from the power of the court.

Neither alternative was bearable but his choices were limited.

There was no way that he could save Anne, and only one way to save the rest of the family.

The King might have left Anne after her miscarriage, possessing enough mercy and patience not to take her to task when she was sick and racked with agony after her long, fruitless struggle to keep the child rooted in her womb... or perhaps he simply could not bear to be in her presence so soon after their loss... but that morning, he decided that he wasn't going to wait any longer.

He wasn't there when the King strode into her chamber but he heard the details of what happened later, through the avid gossip of the ladies who were present.

When he was told that the Queen was still abed, the King was not willing to wait and he strode into her bedchamber, determined to speak his mind and to make her position clear to her.

When the sound of his heavy tread on the polished floorboards and his sharp voice as he spoke her name failed to rouse her, he approached her bed, glaring down at her, unmoved by her face, so still and peaceful in repose, and reached out to lay one hand on her shoulder to roughly shake her awake. Until he shook her, she looked as though she was sleeping soundly, enjoying a brief respite from the bitter turmoil her life had become, but when he tried to rouse her, her head lolled limply, like a rag doll's, her broken neck unable to support its weight.

It was only then that he realized how cold she was.

His screams of horror were so loud and so piercing, so full of shock and grief and pain, that those who heard them would never forget that moment.

* * *

There could be no doubt but that she was murdered.

Had her killer poisoned her or smothered her, the physicians who examined her cold, still body might have made the mistake of thinking that she had died of natural causes, that her miscarriage had left her more ill than she had seemed and that, when she was alone, with no lady to alert when her symptoms worsened, and no way to summon a physician, she slipped away.

Instead, she lay on her bed, as if asleep, until the King disturbed her body.

It was not difficult to imagine what must have happened.

It was no secret that there were many people, both in England and abroad, who would have been only too pleased to see Anne destroyed.

So many people stood to benefit from her death, so many people viewed her as their enemy or as a barrier standing between them and their ambition and some of those people were powerful, powerful enough to be able to buy the services of an assassin ruthless enough to slip into the room of a sleeping, ill woman, waiting until she was alone, with nobody to call for help, before breaking her neck. There were so many people who might have been responsible, from the Bishop of Rome to the Seymours to the Emperor to the Lady Mary that the true culprit was unlikely to ever be discovered.

All anybody could do was speculate, never able to know for certain.

The only consolation – if one could call it that – that the physicians could offer was their assurance that she was unlikely to have felt any pain.

In the aftermath of her miscarriage, she suffered from occasional bleeding and frequent pain that kept her awake at night. Dr Linacre prescribed poppy syrup to dull the pain and allow her to rest, so that she might heal and regain her strength, and Nan Saville confirmed that her mistress had taken a dose shortly before her ladies left her alone for the night. As there was no sign of a struggle, the physicians theorized that she must have been asleep when her killer entered her chamber, too deeply asleep to be aware of his presence, and asleep when he broke her neck.

He was present when the physicians made their report to the King, stressing their belief that the Queen had not suffered, and could see the relief that broke through his grief, if only for a moment, at this news, and hear the sincerity of his hoarse "Thank God she didn't suffer!"

Watching the King, he couldn't help but wonder if the rumours that he was tiring of Anne and would soon find cause to set her aside might not have been exaggerated.

There were so many people at court who wanted nothing more than to hear that Anne would be abandoned, her marriage to the King annulled as though the union was no more lawful than the King's union with the Dowager Princess of Wales. Could their desire to see Anne set aside have been strong enough that they convinced themselves that this would happen? Had they mistakenly assumed that the King's attentions towards Mistress Seymour meant that he wished her to be his Queen because that was _their_ wish, even if it was not the King's?

Had he viewed the worthless wench as more of a threat than she was because of his own fears?

If Anne had lived, might the King have changed his mind?

He once loved her so much that he was willing to forsake his wife of many years, bastardize his once-beloved daughter, tear the country free of the clutches of Rome and risk tearing his country apart for her sake. What man would do so much for a woman if he did not love her with all of his heart? Could such love be destroyed by nothing more than the lack of a son and the presence of a worthless slut whose family were deluded enough to think that she could be Queen?

If Anne had lived, would he remember the love he once held for her before he moved to destroy her? Would he have looked at Mistress Seymour's bland, pallid face and realize that she was not a woman who would ever have the power to make him happy, as Anne had? Would he realize that, if he set Anne aside in favour of that creature, he would bitterly regret his decision before he was a year older, yet be kept from rectifying the situation by his pride, which would never allow him to admit that he had made a mistake, let alone to return to the wife he had cast aside?

Would he change his mind, send the creature from his court, and return to his wife?

Part of him would have liked to think that his son-in-law, the man his daughter had loved for so long, had not been so unworthy of the love she gave him that he would ever seriously contemplate replacing her, least of all with a woman like Mistress Seymour. Anne loved the King so much that it would cause her great pain to know that he could ever be willing to set her and their beloved daughter aside. Part of him would have liked to believe that, if Anne had lived, she would have regained her husband's love and enjoyed it, along with her place as Queen, for the rest of her days but he was sure that there was no hope that this would have been.

If he wanted to have any peace, if he wanted to be reconciled to Anne's death, then he needed to believe that there was no hope and that, with her death, she was spared the pain she would have otherwise had to endure as she watched her husband turn from her and marry another woman.

* * *

_When Anne was a little girl, she was cleverer than any other child he ever encountered._

_Mary was a pleasant girl but no scholar – which was no bad thing in a daughter, who could find that the man chosen to be her husband would not be pleased if he thought that his bride was better educated than he was – and although George was bright enough, he was not a boy who enjoyed spending time at his books, preferring music and poetry and the leisurely pursuits that every gentleman must learn to Latin, Greek and theology._

_Anne was the one who soaked up every minute of Dr Knight's tutelage, and she was such an eager pupil that, although the tutor was originally engaged with the intention that he would instruct George while the girls would learn all they needed to know from their governess, she quickly became Knight's prize pupil, praised most highly and most often whenever he made his reports._

_Dr Knight's stories of the war at Troy fired her imagination, so much so that when he left court to come to Hever on a visit, he was waylaid by his youngest child almost as soon as he entered the castle, and despite her governess' attempts to constrain her to proper behaviour, nothing would satisfy Anne except that he sit down with her and listen to her tell him some of the stories she had heard from Dr Knight. He sat down with his daughter on his lap, listening to her retelling and, if his attentiveness was feigned at first, in order to humour her, he quickly became entranced._

_He was familiar with the stories already, of course, having learned them from his own tutor, but Anne's retelling enchanted him. She told the tales simply, as she was barely six years old, but her enthusiasm was infectious. She didn't mix up any of the stories, and when he quizzed her on the names of the various characters, she knew them all, beaming when he praised her for it._

_"And who was the King of Mycenae?" Her smile faded away abruptly at his last question and he assumed that it was because she did not know the answer, and did not wish to admit it. "Would you like a clue?" He offered, not liking to see her upset and reasoning that, at her age, there was no harm in giving her a little help. "His brother was Menelaus, Helen's husband."_

_"I know who he is." Anne stated flatly, a frown creasing her brow. "His name was Agamemnon."_

_"That's right." He praised. "Clever girl." He expected to see the smile return to her face now that she had answered correctly but instead her frown deepened. "What's wrong, Anne?"_

_Her eyes sparkled with anger when she met his gaze. "He did a very bad thing."_

* * *

Within hours of Anne's death being announced, it seemed as though Whitehall Palace was entirely swathed in black.

Black draperies shrouded paintings and statues, every member of Anne and the King's household wore sombre black gowns and livery and virtually all of the courtiers wore dark colours and spoke in hushed tones. There was no music other than mournful dirges composed in Anne's honour and played in the Chapel Royal, and no laughter. Most of those who were known not to have liked or esteemed Anne in life made a particular effort to dress in black and to school their faces into masks of tragedy. There were one or two exceptions, like the Duchess of Suffolk, who refused to pretend a grief they did not feel, but even they had the sense to withdraw from the court on some pretext or another rather than allowing the King to see that they did not share his grief for Anne.

Had the King seen any of his courtiers dressing in bright colours, as Anne and quite a few others who wished to show their support for her had when the Dowager Princess of Wales died, he didn't doubt that they would quickly have learned what a grave mistake that was. If the King ever wanted to be rid of Anne, he was not minded to remember that now that she was dead.

Even Mistress Seymour wore a black gown and hood, identical to the garb worn by Anne's other ladies-in-waiting, and she joined them in the chapel to pray by the bier on which Anne's body was laid out in state. When courtiers spoke of the motherless little Princess Elizabeth, Mistress Seymour was quick to express her sympathy for the child and to agree that it was a sad thing that she should be deprived of her loving mother, and at such a young age.

When he heard what she was doing, he was curious about her reasons.

When she prayed for Anne's soul – if she was praying for Anne's soul at all, and not thanking God that the lady who stood between her and the Queen's crown was no longer there to challenge her for the King's love – was she trying to convince herself and others that she had never prayed that she might have the opportunity to supplant her?

When she spoke of Princess Elizabeth, was she hoping that the King's concern for his motherless little daughter would lead him to give his daughter a stepmother as soon as possible, and pretending that should that role become hers, she would show her predecessor's child every kindness, doing her best to fill the void Anne's death left in her life?

Or was she thinking of Elizabeth at all?

Was she thinking that, now that Anne was dead and unable to champion her child's interests, it would be easier for her to act as the Lady Mary's advocate, persuading the King that he would be better off if he disinherited the toddler in favour of her elder half-sister? Was it her intention to hint to the King that she believed that it would be better for the stability of the country if he welcomed the daughter who had defied him back to court and restored her to favour, instead of giving the wretched girl the punishment she deserved for her treason?

The Seymours were rumoured to be supporters of the Lady Mary, even if they lacked the courage to make their allegiance publicly known, for fear of exciting the King's anger.

His spies informed him when that snake, Chapuys, paid a visit to Edward Seymour in his apartment the day after Anne was found murdered, and this was enough to confirm his fears.

For Chapuys to take the step of visiting the Seymours so soon after Anne's death, particularly when the Emperor was among those suspected of having a hand in her murder, could only mean that he was very confident of their allegiance to the Lady Mary and of their intention to help her, if they had the power to. If he thought that they would stand her friends, he would not hesitate to cultivate them and encourage that friendship, reminding them that his master would look favourably on those who offered his cousin kindness and assistance when she stood in need of it.

Chapuys had always been quick to seize any opportunity to help the Lady Mary, as he had the Dowager Princess of Wales before her.

At first, he was worried, afraid that he might have miscalculated the effect of the King's grief, that with Anne gone, the King would be left vulnerable to Mistress Seymour's manipulation.

She did not strike him as intelligent or calculating enough to take full advantage of the situation by herself but she would be taking her instructions from her ambitious kin. They might see the King's grief as an opportunity to remind him of his elder daughter, and of how much he once loved her before her arrogance and obstinacy left him with no alternative but to send her away until she learned her true place. Anne's death was proof of how short and how fragile life could be, and he could not dismiss the possibility that, with the right encouragement from the creature he yearned for, the King might decide to let bygones be bygones and welcome his daughter into his life once more, allowing the Lady Mary to choose the terms on which they would be reunited.

That would have been a disaster.

The Lady Mary inherited her pride from both of her parents and she would be adamant that she would come to court only when her father was willing to welcome her back as his legitimate heir, refusing to accept a lesser place. If the King was manipulated into thinking that nothing was more important than that he should be reconciled with the girl, Elizabeth's position would suffer.

He need not have worried.

When he saw Mistress Seymour praying alongside Anne's other ladies, he wanted to order her from his daughter's side, forbidding her to set foot in the Chapel Royal, dishonouring Anne with every moment she spent by her side and with every false prayer that passed her lying lips.

He hated to see the creature who would have seen Anne cast aside by her husband for her sake pretending to grieve for his daughter, knowing that the thoughts that would be uppermost in her mind would be thoughts of how she and her revolting kin might benefit from this turn of events, and speculation about how long she would be obliged to wait before court mourning for Anne ended and the King could make her his wife and Queen but, before he could give voice to his anger and command her to leave before he threw her out, the King spoke.

"You are excused, Mistress Seymour."

He spoke only five words to her but his voice was so cold, so hard and so angry that Mistress Seymour's blue eyes filled with tears and her lower lip trembled. He did not spare her another glance, not even to see that she obeyed his command and removed herself from the chapel. He moved towards the bier, leaning heavily on his cane to take his weight of his injured leg, a legacy of the joust at which he wore the creature's favour instead of asking Anne for hers, as he ought to.

By the time, he reached Anne's side, the tears were streaming down his cheeks unchecked.

Whether the King's tears were tears of grief at the loss of his wife, or tears of regret at the memory of the way he treated her before she was taken from him, he took them as a hopeful sign. Either way, his daughter would not be forgotten and, the more he grieved for Anne's death, the more protective he would be of the rights of the beautiful child she gave him.

Seeing the tears, he knew that he need not fear that the King would turn from Princess Elizabeth, daughter of his beloved, lost Queen, to his stubborn bastard, the Lady Mary.

"Oh, sweetheart." The King's voice was choked with tears, and his sincerity was apparent.

He could hear it, standing just behind his sovereign, and so could Mistress Seymour, who was making her way out of the Chapel Royal as slowly as she dared, as though she hoped that the King would relent, and give her some sign that he still cared for her, but he gave a different sign.

The strangled sob of distress from the creature as she realized that, in death, Anne could break her hold on the King's heart far more effectively than she could in life, was music to his ears.

Edward Seymour was the only member of the family who had the sense to see when he was not wanted. He left the court, perhaps hoping that if he did not stay so long that the King would order him away, he might one day be allowed to return, but the other Seymours stayed, continuing to go about dressed in black and to feign grief for Anne's death, waiting for the King to remember that he cared for the creature, that he had wished to marry her more than anything else and that he was now free to do so, and to show her and her family favour again.

They waited in vain.

The day they buried Anne, the King ordered the Seymours to leave court at once.

Though he did not say it aloud, everybody knew that it would be folly for them to show their faces in his presence again without his express invitation, an invitation he would never give. Mistress Seymour was a living reminder of the unkindness he heaped on Anne during the last months of her life, and of the distress they caused her and that had resulted in the loss of their son.

That was not something that the King would ever forgive them for.

The Seymours left the court, stealing away in the evening as though they were thieves, trying to hide themselves from those who would delight at their departure and disgrace and knowing that there would be nobody who would offer them any sign of friendship, much less any reassurance that the King would change his mind. Even those who pledged friendship and support to them over the past months would not bother to come to bid them farewell, much less to promise to speak to the King on their behalf, when the worst of his grief for Anne faded.

They packed all of their clothes, along with every single item they brought to court when they hoped to make their home there, as one of the first families in England, knowing that if they left anything behind, there was nobody who would send it on to them and no way that they could dare to return to claim it themselves when the King would not invite them to return.

Once they were gone, the King shut himself away in his apartment to mourn his wife in peace.

* * *

He thought of Mistress Seymour from time to time over the years, wondering what had become of her after she was sent away from court, losing the King's favour.

Sometimes, he liked to imagine that she became a nun.

It would not have surprised him to learn that, with his daughter known to have been favoured by the King and assumed by many to have been his mistress in truth, Sir John would be unable to find a decent man of rank who was willing to take such a woman as his wife.

If he could not find a mortal man willing to take her as his wife, she must become a Bride of Christ, who was less particular about the women who pledged themselves to him. He was not a wealthy man, and so was unlikely to be able to buy his daughter entry to one of the more congenial convents, one where the regime was not strict and where ladies of noble and gentle birth could enjoy comfortable lives instead of the austerity of other orders, but he would surely be able to scrape together a dowry sufficient to ensure acceptance to a lesser order.

Countless other unwanted women, many of them better women by far than that creature, were shut away in convents when their kin could not do any better by them, so why not Jane Seymour?

It amused him to think of her dressed in a dark habit of rough, homespun wool, her hair shorn under her wimple and cumbersome headdress. He liked to think that, as she spent her days working and praying, often obliged to fast and remain silent, with none of her kin or those who once sought her friendship ever bothering to pay her a visit, she would think with regret on her brief time at court, as the King's sweetheart, wishing that her life could have turned out differently, and imagining what it would have been like if she had achieved her ambition.

He thought of her spending her nights dreaming of being Queen of England, feted by the court and gowned in the finest silk, velvet and ermine, glittering with jewels, with every comfort and luxury available to her, only to wake up in a cold, bare convent cell, lying on a lumpy pallet with only roughly woven blankets for warmth and realize that that life was forever out of her reach.

She had enjoyed the King's attention for such a short time, a matter of weeks, and to little avail.

He hoped that she would always think of her time at court with regret, wishing that she had never agreed to come, never flaunted herself before the King, always feigning modesty, and never dreamed of trying to come between the King and his Queen. He hoped that she would clearly see how foolish and arrogant she was to think that she could ever be worthy of taking Anne's place, and that she would always know that, whatever the King might have said to her when he thought himself smitten with her, she would never have been able to hold his heart as Anne had.

She deserved to feel regret and pain.

If not for Mistress Seymour, Anne would still be alive.

If Anne had not seen the slut sitting on her husband's knee, she would not have become distressed and she would not have lost her son, the son who would have been her saviour. With a son in the cradle, Anne would have been safe for the rest of her life. The King's love for her would bloom anew when she was the mother of his long-awaited son, and he would recognize that this was proof that their marriage was blessed, and that he should never look at another woman. He would never dream of setting her aside, no matter how many pretty sluts caught his eye.

If not for Mistress Seymour, Anne would have been safe and happy and loved, for the rest of her life. She would have died an old woman, a beloved Queen, wife, mother and grandmother.

She would not have had to die so young, and so alone.

Mistress Seymour could not suffer enough for the wrongs she committed against Anne.

Sometimes, he liked to imagine that Sir John found a husband for his daughter, a humble country squire who eked out a living from the handful of farms in his possession and who was only willing to take a woman with Mistress Seymour's reputation as his wife because her father bribed him with the biggest dowry he could scrape together for her to see her settled, and off his hands.

He imagined that the man saddled with the creature would regard her with scorn, knowing that she had set out to seduce a married man, and that he would be wary of her, always fearful that she might make a cuckold of him, given the opportunity. He would not have the rank or the means to go to court but, even if he did, he would never dream of allowing her to accompany him. On the rare occasions when they had company, he would watch his unworthy wife with sharp eyes, alert for any sign that she might be flirting with his guests.

He would never be able to trust such a woman, or to respect her, and she would never be allowed to forget this.

When he imagined Mistress Seymour married, he never imagined that she might have children.

She had cost Anne's unborn son his life, just as she had cost little Elizabeth her mother, so she did not deserve to be a mother herself.

He hoped that Mistress Seymour would never be allowed to know what it was like to hold her son, or even her daughter, in her arms, marvelling at the tiny life she helped create, just as he hoped that if she married, her husband would grow impatient with their lack of a child, resenting her for failing to give him even this much and regretting the day that he was ever persuaded to take her as his wife, telling himself that even the dowry Sir John used to bribe him to wed her was not adequate compensation for taking on a barren, unworthy bride.

When she died, he hoped that there would be no child to stand by her bedside, and no husband or friends who would mourn her loss.

He wanted them to be as happy to see her dead as he had been to see her sent from court.

Once, when news came of an epidemic in Wiltshire, not far from Wolf Hall, he hoped that the creature had succumbed, though part of him begrudged her the release of death.

He never made any attempt to discover what became of her.

Had he wanted to, it would have been easy enough for him to send somebody to find out what the Seymours were doing but he knew that this was something he could not do.

However much pleasure it would have given him to know that Mistress Seymour's life was a miserable one, it would not compare to the anger and dismay he would feel if his agent was obliged to return to him with news that, somehow, despite her reputation, the creature had managed to forge a happy life for herself, that she had married a good man who doted on her and who could give her a comfortable lifestyle, and that she was the mother of children she would be able to keep with her, and who would love her, not knowing of their mother's shame.

As long as he did not know the truth, he could imagine whatever outcome he pleased for Mistress Seymour, and those imaginings could bring him a measure of temporary comfort.

Anne might be dead but it would surely comfort her to know that her rival was prevented from triumphing over her.

* * *

_He remembered that, when he was a boy, the tales his tutor told of the Trojan war entranced him, inspiring him to practice his swordsmanship, archery and horse-riding so that he might one day be skilled enough to emulate the achievements of the heroes whose stories he listened to avidly, and read himself when his Greek was equal to the task._

_The story of Iphigenia was never one that he paid much attention to._

_She was not a hero who fought countless opponents and defeated them, she was not a King whose strategies could mean the difference between victory and defeat, she was not wily Odysseus, whose shrewdness he hoped one day to emulate, or Achilles, invincible but for one fatal flaw, or even Helen, whose desertion had caused the war than captured his imagination._

_Her role in the story was a minor one, and her destiny was to give her father the chance to wage the war that would make a legend of him, and many others._

_"If King Agamemnon had not sacrificed Iphigenia, then the thousand ships would never be able to set sail." He pointed out to Anne who, unlike him, was indignant on Iphigenia's behalf, resenting Agamemnon for doing what needed to be done. "There would have been no war at Troy, and Menelaus would never have been reunited with his wife."_

_"It was still wrong to kill her. He didn't deserve to win when he killed his daughter."_

_He should have told her that Iphigenia did a daughter's duty by sacrificing herself for her father's sake, so that Agamemnon could achieve his goals._

_He should have taken the opportunity to prepare Anne for the fact that, when the time came, she too would be expected to do what was necessary to help him, and her brother, advance._

_In these Christian times, no pagan god would call upon him to spill his daughter's blood on a sacrificial altar but she would still have her part to play in ensuring the advancement and prosperity of her family. When she was old enough to be married, he would find a husband who would be a useful ally for him. Anne's husband would be a man who was well-placed to help **him** , not a man chosen because he would make **her** happy. For Mary, it would be the same and even George's wife would be chosen for the benefits she could bring, not for personal considerations._

_But she was only six, and he could not bring himself to tell her that, not yet._

_Instead he smiled, holding her in his arms. "Iphigenia loved her father, and he loved her. I'm sure that Agamemnon knew that his daughter would want to do everything she could to help him."_

_Anne shook her head decisively. "He didn't think that. He just killed her anyway."_

_"How do you know that he didn't?"_

_"If he did, he would have asked her first."_


	2. Chapter 2

Part of him would have liked to see the King remain a widower for the rest of his life rather than try to find another woman to take her place, but he knew that this could not be.

The King mourned Anne for months before the subject of her replacement was broached but the subject was not one that could be avoided indefinitely, even if the King wished to. He was still without the male heir that he had set the Princess Dowager of Wales aside to father, and his Privy Council were not comfortable with the idea of Princess Elizabeth as the sole heir to the throne.

Elizabeth was still a little girl, after all, many years away from being old enough to marry and give the King grandsons, or to rule in her own right, and although she was a healthy child, that didn't mean that she would be safe from the many illnesses to which young children were prey.

No monarch could feel safe with only one small girl as his heir.

Better that the King should remarry in the hope of fathering other children, and risking that he would father a son who would supplant Elizabeth, than that they take the risk that he might decide to legitimise his elder daughter in order to have two heiresses instead of just one.

Between the two alternatives, he would rather see Elizabeth lose her place to a half-brother by her new stepmother, whoever she might be, than to see her lose out in favour of Mary, that stubborn girl whose refusal to accept Anne as the true Queen and Elizabeth as the true Princess had caused Anne such distress, as well as contributing to the strain in the royal marriage before Anne's death.

He knew well that, even if the King decreed that Lady Mary was to be second-in-line to the throne after Elizabeth and her heirs, even if he made it clear that Elizabeth was the legitimate Princess and rightful heiress while Mary was nothing more than a bastard who was included in the line of succession out of necessity rather than because she had any possible right to expect it, once her right to a place in the line of succession was conceded in principle, it was inevitable that the Emperor would not be content with that. He would push for her to be first in line, supplanting Elizabeth, and there were too many people in England who would consider that to be fair.

Despite everything, far too many of the English people still felt loyalty and affection for Katherine's girl, and would want to see her kindly treated.

They might feel sympathy for Elizabeth, whose mother was murdered when she was just a toddler, but that did not mean that they would not feel that it was just that the King's elder daughter should be his heiress ahead of her younger sister, and he knew better than to expect that there would be protests from the people if the King chose to reinstate Mary as a legitimate heiress, or that many of them would support an attempt to seize the throne from her on Elizabeth's behalf.

Even the King might come to believe that it was in the country's best interests if he named Mary, a woman grown, of an age to be a wife and mother, as his heir rather than Elizabeth, a mere child.

Had his other daughter not disgraced herself and her family by wedding William Stafford, he might have hoped that she would be able to capture the King's heart, becoming his mistress and wielding influence in that capacity if he would not make her his wife, but he knew that this could not be.

It would have been to their advantage if they could have a second Boleyn girl on the throne, as she could help protect little Elizabeth's interests, and he was sure that, if the King wished it so, Archbishop Cranmer could grant a dispensation that would allow him to marry his late wife's sister, despite the fact that he insisted that it was unlawful for him to marry his brother's widow, but Mary would never give up her husband and the life she had built with him, even with the Queen's crown as an inducement, and she would certainly never agree to become his mistress again.

He was so certain of the response she would give that he did not even bother to contact her to ask her if she might be willing to do this service for her family.

He knew that she would never consent to help him, so there was no point in him asking.

His eldest daughter had never respected her duty towards her family, as Anne had.

Once it became clear to him that there was no alternative but that the King would remarry, he focused his efforts on guiding his choice of a bride.

If the King had to remarry, he needed a bride who would not compromise Elizabeth's position.

Under no circumstances could he allow the King to contemplate an Imperial bride.

The Emperor was no fool and, if he knew that the King had set his heart on marrying one of his kinswomen, he would not hesitate to press his advantage.

It was certain that he would either demand that the Lady Mary should be declared the King's legitimate heir, second only to any sons of the new marriage or, if he favoured a subtler method, recognizing that the King would not allow himself to be commanded to legitimise the daughter he had declared a bastard and thus imply that he was wrong when he sought to extricate himself from his sinful union with the girl's mother, least of all by the monarch who worked to block his annulment, he would propose a double marriage, offering to agree that the King might marry the lady of his choice if he consented to the royal match proposed for the Lady Mary, a match that would require that the girl should be declared legitimate, to be worthy of her future husband.

He suffered months of anxiety after the King received a portrait of the young Duchess of Milan, the Emperor's niece and a celebrated beauty, just sixteen years of age.

He saw the way the King looked at the painted canvass and, in his eyes, he saw the same infatuation that was once directed at Anne in happier days, infatuation that had led him to turn his country upside down, courting the enmity of the Emperor, so that he could make her his wife when Anne made it clear to him that she would never be content to be his mistress.

If a painting could have such an effect on him, then the flesh and blood woman who inspired it would be able to effortlessly wrap him around her little finger, unless the painter had grossly exaggerated her beauty. The thought of the King being enraptured by the Emperor's niece was not one to be borne, for it was certain that her uncle would have prepared her, instructing her to ensure that, once she was Queen, she made every effort to see to it that the Lady Mary was restored to her father's favour, to her former royal status and to the line of succession.

The Emperor might not be prepared to wage war on the Lady Mary's behalf, but he could achieve a great deal for her if he employed a subtler weapon.

There would be little the King would not do if such a bride wished it of him, and any Queen who championed the Lady Mary would undermine the interests of the Princess Elizabeth. A new marriage could make the King sentimental and, if his new wife expressed a wish to see the Lady Mary, he could be pleased by the opportunity to reconcile with his eldest daughter. It could suit him very well to be able to tell himself that he was welcoming Mary back out of charity rather than because he had softened towards her, in order to oblige his bride, who wished for family unity, rather than because he had any desire to have his daughter back in his life.

It was ironic that it was the late Princess Dowager of Wales who prevented a marriage that would have given her daughter an ally and threatened the prospects of Anne's child.

As the niece of the Emperor, the Duchess of Milan was a great-niece of Katherine of Aragon, an affinity that forbade her marriage to the King.

The King would undoubtedly have been happy to accept a dispensation from Archbishop Cranmer, or even to grant himself a dispensation in his capacity as Supreme Head of the Church of England, but the Emperor could not accept that solution without offending the Bishop of Rome, who would take umbrage at the idea that the issuing of dispensations, which he regarded as his prerogative, should be usurped by others. For the Emperor, only a dispensation granted by the Bishop of Rome would suffice, but the King would never agree to humble himself by petitioning for that dispensation, no matter how beautiful and charming his prospective bride might be.

How could he, who set one wife aside on the grounds that the Bishop of Rome lacked the power to issue dispensation, go to him, cap in hand, to ask to take that lady's great-niece as his third wife?

The match was forgotten, much to his relief.

It would have suited him to see the King married to a French princess, and he did everything he could to encourage him to think that an alliance with France was desirable. Not only was it an opportunity to ally with France, providing England with protection from the Emperor, they could also press King Francis to formalize a betrothal between Elizabeth and his youngest son.

When the time came for her to succeed her father, she would do well to have the support of the French royal family.

When there was no suitable French princess willing to become England's new Queen, he backed Cromwell's suggestion that the King should marry a sister of the Duke of Cleves.

It might not be as exalted a match as some of the others the King had hoped for, as Cleves was a small state, though well-placed, but the Duke of Cleves could introduce England to the Protestant League, and neither he nor his sister would have any reason to try to encourage that Elizabeth, a child brought up in the reformed religion, should be set aside in favour of Catholic Mary.

Cromwell worked diligently to secure the match, sending Holbein to paint a flattering portrait of the lady and managing to persuade the Privy Council that the match was of such vital importance that they should excuse the dowry that the Duke of Cleves would be loath to part with. It took him some time but he was eventually able to convince the rest of the Council to support the match. Their ardent desire to see the King remarried, and to have hope that a Prince of Wales would be born, led them to make the necessary concessions to allow the match to proceed.

The King was pleased by the portrait and by the reports he was given of the lady's character, and he instructed the envoys to conclude the marriage negotiations with all speed.

If the idea of being married to a second Queen Anne unnerved him, he gave no sign of it.

* * *

Though it was plain to everybody who was present at their first meeting that the King was disappointed with his new bride, and had not found her to be the kind of wife he hoped for, he did a better job of covering his disappointment than most of his courtiers would have expected him to be capable of. He gave orders that his bride's formal reception was to go ahead as planned, and made it clear that he expected all of the nobility of the court to be present for the moment when their new Queen was conducted into the presence chamber, and that he expected them to show his bride the courtesy and deference that was due to their future Queen.

As the King's former father-in-law, as grandfather to the King's only legitimate child and as one of the highest ranking noblemen in the country, he was standing closer to the dais than any other person, save Cromwell – a privilege that he was sure many resented, hating to see him so favoured, even after Anne's death – and from his place, he could watch his little granddaughter.

Although the King brought little Elizabeth out among the people from time to time, allowing them to see their Princess and giving her the opportunity to win them over with her beauty and her charm, it was rare that she was permitted to attend formal receptions, at her age.

It was plain that she was excited to be here today, although she was outwardly composed, befitting her rank, showing that her governess had been diligent in teaching her how a princess ought to behave. She was growing tall for her age, and was so poised that it was difficult to believe that she was just six years old. He could remember one courtier remarking that, when he visited Hatfield and paid his respects to Elizabeth, the child had greeted him with as great a gravity as if she had been a woman of forty, and it was not difficult to believe.

He remembered Anne at that age, and how clever she was.

Nobody was proof against the charm of the little girl Anne once was, and the same was true of Elizabeth.

Anne would be so proud of her daughter, if she could see her now, and it could not fail to please her to see how much the King favoured their spirited, red-haired little girl.

Before her death, she had had cause to fear that a day might come when her beloved child would be rejected by the King because her mother displeased him but now that day would never come.

The King loved the child dearly, cherishing her for her mother's sake as well as her own.

Elizabeth's dainty ivory gown was perfect, the gold embroidery on the bodice complimenting her beautiful red hair, and the matching coronet signifying her royal rank to all present. The pearls she wore around her slender neck were a gift from Anne on the last Christmas of her life, and he knew that Elizabeth liked to wear them in her memory, though she owned finer jewels, including some that were once gifts from her father to her mother, jewels that the King gifted to his daughter, not wanting them to be worn by another, even his future bride.

Elizabeth cherished every keepsake of the mother she had lost too soon.

The flowers were Elizabeth's idea, one that he was pleased to encourage, even though Lady Bryan voiced doubts about whether or not it would be fitting, given the solemnity and formality of the occasion. His meeting with his daughter's successor may have been a brief one but he was certain that the Lady Anne was not a woman who would take offence at such a simple gift; if anything, she was far more likely to be charmed by it, as would many of the courtiers who witnessed the welcoming of England's new Queen and the presentation of her young stepdaughter. The King smiled his approval when Elizabeth took her place by his side, carefully cradling her bouquet, complimenting her for her idea and telling her that her stepmother would be pleased.

Hearing the King's words, he could imagine that, if the Lady Anne did not express pleasure at Elizabeth's presentation, she was certain to irritate the King.

A fanfare of trumpets heralded the arrival of the young woman brought from Cleves to be the King's third wife, and the courtiers watched her with avid eyes as she entered.

Her gown was ornate but old-fashioned and her headdress was a bulky one, concealing all of her hair from view and surrounding her head like a wide, raised halo. She was not an unattractive woman but her garb detracted from her natural prettiness rather than enhancing it and it was obvious from her demeanour that she was nervous and overawed by her new court.

He had heard that the Duke of Cleves presided over a strict, poor court but surely the man could have seen to it that his sister could bring fashionable gowns befitting her new station to England. The King had not demanded that his new bride bring a dowry to England, so the Duke of Cleves could not plead penury as an excuse not to ensure that his sister was properly provided for.

As he watched the new Queen Anne approach, memories of the previous Queen Anne sprang unbidden to his mind, and he suspected that he was not the only one to think such thoughts, though he knew better than to think that the majority of the courtiers present would be mourning Anne's loss while they watched her successor enter the court.

Everybody who had known Anne, from the King to his courtiers and perhaps even little Elizabeth, if her memories of her mother were clear enough, could imagine the kind of gowns that she would have favoured if she was still alive to grace the court, knowing that she would never have appeared before them in a frumpy German gown.

Anne would be wearing the latest French fashions, and wearing them with such grace that no other woman could ever hope to outshine her, not even the prettiest of the court ladies.

Anne would enter with her head held high, moving as confidently as if she owned the palace, and she would be able to carry off that air of confidence so successfully that even those who were unwilling to welcome her would recognise that she was not a lady to be trifled with, and that they should think carefully before courting her enmity, as she would remember which of them were her friends and which of them chose to become her enemies.

While Anne's successor did her best to hide her apprehension as she came face to face with the court over which she was now expected to preside as Queen and whose members were staring at her with avid eyes, she could not hide it entirely, a potentially dangerous mistake on her partThis was a court that could smell fear, and that was ruthless in exploiting weakness.

The new Queen would need to have her wits about her if she hoped to survive it.

The King stepped forward to welcome his new bride, kissing her briefly, ceremoniously, on the lips before speaking to her. "My lady," he made a shallow bow to her and she inclined her head in return. "I am here to welcome you to what is yours." He told her courteously.

She smiled shyly in response. "Your Majesty is very gracious, and I am very happy."

She must have been taught some English prior to her being sent to wed the King but it was clear that she was not yet comfortable with her new language. That would take time. He found himself hoping that she would be able to have that time. The King could do worse in a bride.

Cromwell was the first to begin applauding – hardly surprising, as he had a vested interest in seeing this match succeed – but the other courtiers were quick to follow his example.

Taking his bride's hand in his and turning so that he was still facing the dais, on which his daughter stood, eagerly awaiting her turn to be presented, the King beckoned to Elizabeth.

"Allow me to present my daughter, the Princess Elizabeth."

The love and pride in his voice as he spoke the name of his beloved child was unmistakeable, but those who knew the King best would also know that there was a warning edge to his voice. Just as he had not responded to any of the attempts made to persuade him to soften towards the Lady Mary, or looked kindly on those who made the mistake of thinking that, with Anne dead, he would be susceptible to appeals on behalf of his bastard daughter and might be persuaded to restore her to favour, he would not tolerate it if his new bride proved unwilling to deal kindly with Elizabeth.

He might be able to forgive her for his disappointment over their first meeting but he would not be able to forgive her if she was an unkind or disinterested stepmother to his precious child.

Elizabeth stepped forward, dipping a graceful curtsey before offering her bouquet to her new stepmother. "For you. I think they are pretty."

As he expected she would, Lady Anne accepted the bouquet with pleasure, enchanted by Elizabeth. "Thank you, Princess. I think you are pretty too." She told her, and Elizabeth's answering smile was a radiant one. The child loved compliments as much as her mother had at her age... at any age. She turned slightly to speak to the King, her genuine smile making her look more attractive than she had on their first meeting, when she was so nervous that she could barely string a sentence together. "I shall love her." She said, reaching out to stroke Elizabeth's hair. Her words were spoken in an earnest tone, and nobody present could doubt her sincerity.

The King did not say anything in response to this, but those watching his facial expressions could see that his feelings towards his bride warmed in that moment. Even if she was not the wife he had hoped for, even if he felt that she was not as beautiful as her portrait had led him to believe, the fact that she was plainly willing to be a loving stepmother to Elizabeth counted for much.

Cromwell could breathe an inward sigh of relief, knowing that if the match pleased the King, he would not suffer for making it.

For himself, he could be relieved to know that, if his son-in-law could be happy with this amiable lady, a lady who would be happy to be a mother to little Elizabeth rather than viewing the child a nuisance or a threat, he did not need to fear that the King would seek to set her aside in favour of another woman, one who might prove to be a threat to his granddaughter's interests.

His daughter's successor was a woman who could be trusted.

He could watch their wedding and rejoice.

* * *

He never expected that the new Queen would cause trouble.

She was an intelligent woman, even if she was not a sophisticated one, and her brother's ambassadors to England and the King's ambassadors to Cleves ensured that she was made aware of how matters stood in the English court, so that she would not displease the King by championing those he considered his enemies or deriding those he considered his friends. They would have warned her of the King's temper, warned her that he was not a man who would thank her for interfering in his business, and that her best hope of pleasing him would be to conform to his will in all things, never arguing with him and never expressing an opinion contrary to his own.

She knew that, by marrying the King, she would gain two stepdaughters but that only one of her stepdaughters enjoyed their father's favour, while the other was barred from his presence.

She would have been told that the Lady Mary, born of a union that the King entered into in his youth, not knowing that he sinned by doing so, persisted in her defiance by stubbornly claiming the title of Princess, the title to which she, as a bastard, had no right, and that because of her stubbornness and her disobedience, her father refused to see her. She would have been warned that, if she wished to please the King, she should focus her energy on being a loving stepmother to the Princess Elizabeth rather than wasting her time championing the interests of the Lady Mary.

It would please the King to see that she was kind to Elizabeth.

It would anger him to hear her defend Mary.

Hinting that the girl should be forgiven for her defiance or, worse still, that it was to be expected that Lady Mary would have sided with her mother, would enrage him.

It should have been plain enough for all but the simple-minded to be able to understand how the land lay, and the new Queen was far from simple.

He took the initiative, when he paid a call on her to welcome her to her new country and to thank her for her kindness towards his little granddaughter, to warn her that, though there might be some disloyal courtiers who would try to persuade her to act as an advocate for the Lady Mary, and who would prey on her tender heart and gentle nature to make her feel pity on the girl, she would do herself no good if she allowed herself to be swayed by their coaxing. They might try to make her believe that the King longed for a reason to welcome Mary back into his life, and that he would be grateful to her if she requested it of him and gave him an excuse to rescind his daughter's banishment, but their only interest would be in helping Mary, even if it meant putting their new Queen in a position where she would anger her husband.

He explained that the Lady Mary knew what it was she needed to do in order to win back her father's love but that, despite the efforts made to persuade her to take the Oath, as she was commanded to years ago, and to prove that she was his loyal subject and loving daughter – something that any truly loving and loyal daughter should be _happy_ to do – the Lady Mary remained obdurate, refusing to listen to anybody who counselled her to take the Oath and to admit her illegitimacy rather than persisting in her defiance of her royal father.

If she refused to listen to the lords the King sent to persuade her, and even to her cousin's ambassador, she wouldn't listen to the Queen, and wouldn't thank her for trying to convince her.

It was likely that the Lady Mary would regard her as an enemy for her advice, not as a friend.

The Queen listened to his words, never interrupting him, and when he said his piece, she thanked him politely for his advice. Her tone was cool as she remarked that she was sure that he only wished to do her a service by advising her, and that she was grateful for the kindness he had shown her. When she rose to her feet, offering him her hand to kiss, it was clear that their interview was at an end and that she had no wish to hear any more from him about the Lady Mary. It was also clear that he had fallen in her estimation, and that she saw him as a cold, unfeeling man rather than as the proud and affectionate grandfather she had seen him be for Elizabeth, and that she knew why he had no wish to see Mary return to court.

"Princess Elizabeth tells me that the Lady Mary was kind to her when they lived together," she remarked in her halting English, before dismissing him, showing that she valued the opinion of a little girl above his. "She is a clever child. I think I may trust that she speaks the truth."

Unable to call his granddaughter a liar, and knowing that it was pointless to try to dissuade her, he smiled, bowed and withdrew, praying that the King would make it clear to her that this was one matter that his wife had no business interfering in, and that when he did, the Queen would have the sense to give up.

He was not surprised when he learned that, just days after he cautioned her, she asked the King if his eldest daughter might be permitted to come to court, so that she could meet her.

He was relieved, though not particularly surprised, when he heard that the King had refused her request in no uncertain terms, telling her that she should be a mother to Elizabeth, if she wished to interest herself in one of his daughters, and to forget about the Lady Mary, who did not deserve kindness at her hands or at his after her unfilial and treasonous disobedience, insisting that Mary was very fortunate that he had not sent her to the scaffold, as was his right. He refused her request to invite Mary to court, and her request to be allowed to visit her at Hunsdon.

He was surprised when he heard that the new Queen repeated her request after giving the King a couple of days to cool his temper, telling him that it was long past time to move beyond the hurts of the past, and that it was not right for a family to be divided, and when she continued to press him, never accepting his refusals. George's wife, Jane, who was installed as one of the Queen's ladies and who saw to it that he was kept informed about her actions, told him that, although it was plain to all that the King was angry about his wife's repeated attempts to persuade him to soften towards the Lady Mary, and although his responses to her pleas grew harsher each time she pressed him, the Queen persisted, never accepting 'no' as his final answer.

It seemed that the foolish woman had taken it into her head that she had a duty to reconcile father and daughter, and to see to it that an unhappy young woman was welcomed back to court, and to the life of luxury and honour that a King's daughter deserved.

Eventually, to his dismay and disgust, the King gave in.

He didn't yield graciously, nor did he show any inclination to reach out to the Lady Mary himself, but he finally grew so impatient with her attempts at coaxing him that he growled that she could visit the girl herself, if that was the only way that he could have some peace.

The Queen took him at his word, and set off for Hundsdon the next day, and made several visits over the coming months.

Later, when he learned that the Queen had succeeded where others had failed, and persuaded Mary to take the Oath, he cursed himself for mentioning the Oath to her in the first place. He had clearly underestimated both her determination to bring about Mary's reconciliation with her father, and her ability to persuade a stubborn girl not to cut off her nose to spite her face.

Once the King learned that the Lady Mary had agreed to take the Oath, the Queen was instantly forgiven for their disputes over the girl, and he granted permission for her to invite Mary to court.

* * *

Although the Lady Mary was a child of no more than ten or eleven years the last time she was permitted to come to court, and although she no longer enjoyed the royal status she had enjoyed in those days, she walked in to the Great Hall with her head held high when she was announced, inclining her head regally to the courtiers who bowed or curtsied at her approach. She wore a grey silk gown, and a pearl diadem, most likely a gift from the Queen, as the jewels she was once permitted to call hers were reclaimed by the King for the use of his true heiress when she was exposed as a bastard, and it was evident by her bearing that she intended to show them that she was still a princess in all but name.

It was daring behaviour on her part, as the King surely expected to be greeted with a penitent daughter who recognised that she had wronged her royal father with her past defiance, but he supposed that he should have expected daring from the daughter of the stubborn Spanish woman.

Not all of the courtiers bowed before her.

A few were loyal to the Boleyns and the Howards, and took no pleasure in seeing Elizabeth's rival at court, knowing what it would mean for the child if her half-sister managed to win the King's love away from her. Others, who might have wished her well, or at least not wished her ill, felt that Mary's uncertain status made it too risky for them to pay their respects to her until the King indicated how he expected his illegitimate daughter to be treated by his courtiers, and thought that it was wisest and safest for them to wait for him to set the tone.

The Lady Mary steadfastly ignored those who did not pay her homage, keeping her eyes fixed on her father and on the Queen as she entered the Great Hall.

He was standing just behind Elizabeth, who stood between her father and stepmother, a smile of welcome on her young face, when the herald banged his staff before announcing Mary, and it pleased him to hear her announced as the Lady Mary Tudor, the title he hoped she would bear until the day she died. It pleased him even more to know that, now that she had committed to taking the Oath, _Lady_ Mary could not avoid paying her respects to _Princess_ Elizabeth.

Mary swept a deep, regal curtsey as soon as she came within a few yards of the King.

"I ask Your Majesty for his blessing." She asked, keeping her eyes lowered.

He thought that she would have been justly served for her past defiance if the King had refused to bestow his blessing on her, leaving her bent in her obeisance while he sternly told her that, though he had permitted her to come to court, she would have to prove herself worthy of the kindness he had shown her in recalling her from exile, and remember that, if she dared to disobey him again, she would be very fortunate if he stopped at imprisoning her in the Tower for the rest of her days.

It was what he would have done, had he been in the King's place, and had he had the misfortune to be the father of such an unfilial, undutiful child.

He should have known that the sentimental King would do no such thing, not when the Lady Mary presented herself to him as a humble, loving daughter.

Instead of snubbing Mary, he stepped forward, reaching out his hand to her to help her to her feet.

"My own daughter." After raising Mary, he kept her hand in his as he drew her closer to the Queen and to Elizabeth. "May I present you to Her Majesty Queen Anne." Mary curtsied to the Queen, who stepped forward to kiss her gently on the cheek. "And to Her Highness the Princess Elizabeth."

He considered Mary's curtsey too shallow, thinking that a bastard should show the Princess of England and the heiress to the throne more respect, and he was disgruntled to see the King accept Mary's gesture, without requiring more of her by way of obeisance to Elizabeth. He wouldn't be surprised if the King believed that this was enough, within a family.

"Hello, Mary." Elizabeth's smile was wide and infectious as she skipped over to her older sister, crooking her finger to motion her to bend over so that she could kiss her.

Several of the courtiers applauded softly, touched by the scene before them.

He felt like shouting, like reminding them that the Lady Mary had been a traitor in all but name, denying the rights of the true heir to the throne so that she could pretend that she was something more than another royal bastard. He wanted to snatch the King by the front of his doublet and shake him, if that was what it took to remind him of the times when this bastard brat had dared to insult Anne to her face, had dared to say that little Elizabeth was illegitimate and had dared to flout the King's express commands. He wanted to tell the King that he should have sent Mary to the scaffold long ago, and that he was a coward for allowing her to escape justice all these years because he lacked the steel to see his daughter die a traitor's death.

An icy chill crept through his veins at the King's next words, and for an instant he wondered if his self-control had slipped and he had spoken his thoughts aloud.

"I remember some of you were desirous that I should put this jewel to death."

The King's voice was almost indignant and his eyes were granite-hard as they scanned the Hall, as though searching out the faces of those who had tried to convince him that it was a mistake on his part to show Mary such leniency. Murmurs of horror and dismay rippled through the Hall, as those who supported Mary seized the opportunity to express their disgust towards those who would have seen the girl executed, while those who had recognised that she could not be allowed to live as long as she continued to deny the invalidity of her parents' union, and her own illegitimacy, and who sought to persuade the King of this, did their best to avoid his steely gaze, in the hope that he had forgotten that they were among those calling for Mary's death.

For her part, Mary swayed, looking ready to swoon.

Much as he disliked the girl, much as he regretted the fact that the King hadn't sent her to the scaffold long ago, he had to admire her for the shrewd gesture.

No sooner had she begun to sway where she stood than the King reached out to catch her.

"I've got you. You're safe." He soothed her, supporting her until her faintness passed. "Be of good cheer, Mary, for I swear to you nothing now will go against you."

He caught a flicker of fear in Mary's eyes, and knew that she must be wondering how long her good fortune would last, and what it would take for her to ensure that she stayed in his good graces. She knew as well as anybody present that, if she hoped to improve her position at court, if she hoped that her father might consider allowing her royal honours or including her in the line of succession, she would have to ensure that she never lost his favour. She knew what it was like to be without the King's favour, and she had no intention of losing it again, if she could help it.

He vowed to himself that, if a day ever came when the King grew so fond of the Lady Mary that it put Elizabeth's position in the slightest jeopardy, he would see to it that she didn't live long.

He would not allow Anne's daughter to lose out on her rights, and he would never bow to Katherine's bastard, not after what was necessary in order to make Elizabeth and the Boleyns secure.

* * *

_"Agamemnon was nasty to King Priam's daughters too," Anne's scowl made it clear how she felt about the long-dead Greek king. "He let his men take them away, and he made Princess Cassandra come with him to be his servant." Doctor Knight had evidently deemed it best to amend the role that Agamemnon had intended for Cassandra, rather than leaving himself in a position where he would have had to explain the role of a concubine to a little girl of six. "That was wrong."_

_"If Agamemnon's daughter had to die, why shouldn't Priam's daughters suffer too? He could have avoided the whole war if he'd sent Helen back to her husband when Paris first brought her to Troy, but he didn't. At least Priam didn't live to see his daughters' fates. He was the lucky one."_


	3. Chapter 3

He wondered if George and Mary knew.

Theirs had never been a particularly close family, though when they were children, he made an effort to visit Hever frequently, so that he didn't miss their childhoods entirely.

Knowing that, when they were adults, their fortunes would depend on how well they established themselves at court, he saw to it that they had the chance to obtain positions in royal households at a fairly young age, to give them the opportunity to learn all they could of life at court, but when they were very young, he tried to find time to play with them.

Their childhood would be short, and he wanted them to enjoy it.

Although he would have denied it if he was asked, Anne was his favourite of his children and the one who commanded most of his time and attention, but he still tried to spend time with the other two, and get to know them. He spoke to their governess and tutor about their progress and conduct, and he listened to the children when they told him of their lessons and games.

It wasn’t until they were adults that he realised just how little he knew them.

Mary was banished from court almost two years before Anne's death, and he had forbidden her brother and sister to write to her, or to send her money or gifts. Mary made the choice to turn her back on her family, deciding that, instead of asking her father to find her a husband, instead of recognising that, as well as him being able to find a better husband for her than the one she found for herself, her marriage was also a potentially useful card that could be played to benefit their family, who were sorely in need of any cards they could possibly lay hands on to play, she decided to be selfish and please only herself. She didn’t care that it humiliated her father to be presented with a common soldier as his son-in-law, or that such a man was completely unworthy to be the brother-in-law of the Queen of England, or how her unworthy marriage reflected on Anne.

It probably never even occurred to her to think how the King would feel when he learned of his lowly new brother-in-law, or if it had, she didn’t care about the effect it would have on Anne.

For all Mary knew or cared, the King might have taken his anger over her marriage out on Anne, blaming her because she had the misfortune to have a sister who lacked the sense, and the pride in her status as a member of one of England’s noble families, to choose a suitable husband, and feeling angry with her for exposing him to embarrassment.

Mary was selfish, and thought only of what she wanted, instead of what was best for the family.

She made the choice to turn her back on her family, so she no longer deserved to reap the benefits of all that her father and sister worked for. She didn't deserve to be paid an allowance from her father's income, and she didn't deserve to be allowed to live at court, and to have a place of honour in her sister's household as a lady-in-waiting. It would have been unthinkable for him to allow Mary and her husband to remain at court as living reminders of Mary’s folly, providing Anne’s enemies with an excuse to belittle her, now that her sister had degraded herself.

It was the duty of the husband she chose to support Mary, and any children they had, to the best of his ability.

If they all starved or froze to death for lack of food or fuel, it was no concern of his.

He owed her nothing.

The only reason he saw to it that she was invited to court to attend Anne’s funeral was that he was half-afraid that, if he didn’t, she would have appeared uninvited, and made such a fuss that she would either be allowed to enter in order to pacify her or that she would disgrace her family by drawing attention with her unseemly display, particularly on such a solemn occasion.

Rather than risk embarrassment by having his disowned daughter barge into the Chapel Royal for the service, perhaps even publicly castigating him for not sending for her, for not recognising that she too had a right to mourn Anne, as much a right as any member of the family, he decided that the best thing he could do was to be the one who issued the invitation, so that when Mary came to court, she came on his terms, not her own. As he was the one to issue the invitation, he could direct that Mary was not to bring that husband of hers with her, or any child she might have.

He had no interest in speaking to Mary’s husband, or in meeting any children she might have borne since he last saw her.

Since she was heavily pregnant when he last saw her, there must be at least one child, unless it was stillborn, but he didn’t want to know about it.

He would have been overjoyed if God chose to send him more grandchildren by Anne, especially if those grandchildren were boys, and he would have liked to know that George would one day give him a grandson, an heir to all the Boleyns had achieved, a boy who would ensure the continuation of their family name and ensure that they continued to be one of the great families in England after he was gone, when their cousin was Queen, but he had no use for a Stafford brat, and it pained him to think that his grandchildren could be born to the child who least needed them.

Thankfully, Mary had the sense to obey his instruction to leave her husband at home, rather than bringing him to a court where there was no place for him as a way of proving that her father could no longer command her, and although he was obliged to invite her to dine with him and George, as neglecting to do so would have led to unwelcome gossip, she knew better than to think that he would have any interest in hearing about her family and didn’t speak of them.

Mary was polite but distant at dinner, barely speaking and, when she did speak, addressing her remarks to George rather than to him.

She enquired after little Elizabeth, expressing her sympathy for a child who was rendered motherless before her third birthday, but she did not ask to see the child, or suggest that she could take a place in Elizabeth’s household, to watch over her sister’s daughter, nor did she hint that her children by Stafford could be companions to the little princess.

He had already decided that, if she presumed to ask that of him, he would refuse.

When the time came for Elizabeth to have companions to share her lessons, she should have the daughters of loyal nobles in her household, not the unwanted products of her aunt’s ill-chosen marriage. The families and future husbands of her childhood companions could one day become useful allies for her but she was better off without reminders of her Stafford cousins.

A couple of times during the meal, he caught his elder daughter watching him with cold, appraising eyes, a set, angry expression on her face, but he told himself that Mary was only angry with him for sticking to his word and cutting off her allowance, instead of relenting and sending her money to support her new husband and family, as she had probably expected him to, once enough time passed to cool his initial anger towards her over her marriage. She probably hadn’t believed that he meant what he said when he told her that he was cutting her from his life.

That had to be the reason for her angry gaze.

She couldn’t know the truth.

They exchanged only the briefest of farewells before Mary left court to return to her husband, and once she was gone, he put her out of his mind.

When word reached him that she had died, he saw no need to attend her funeral.

* * *

It wasn’t until after Anne’s death that he realised just how much his life and George’s had revolved around her, since they first committed themselves to seeing to it that she became Queen.

All those years of planning with the Duke of Norfolk, of monitoring Anne’s interactions with the King, and issuing occasional instructions, when they were warranted, of working to find allies who could help them to help the King to free himself from his union with that accursed Spanish woman, so she could no longer stand between Anne on the throne, of travelling on the King’s business when delicate matters required their attention as they could be entrusted to nobody but Anne’s kin, of rejoicing when the King showed them how much he favoured the Boleyn men for Anne’s sake and for the sake of the work they did for him, all the time they spent watching out for Anne’s interests during her marriage, and seeing to it that she didn’t ruin everything with a show of temper that would anger the King... all that time they had spent together, for all those years, united by a common purpose, and now he found that his son was a virtual stranger to him.

He couldn’t remember the last time he and George had had a proper conversation unconnected with Anne.

He couldn’t name his son’s friends at court, if George had any.

He didn’t know if his son was living comfortably on his income from his various posts, or if he had amassed debts as he strove to live the life that a nobleman was expected to lead at court.

He had no idea how George was faring in his marriage, although the fact that there was no sign of a Boleyn grandchild must bode ill for either Jane’s fertility or her relationship with her husband.

It was a shock to him to see that George was no longer young.

He was no longer the boy who had played in the gardens of Hever with his father and his younger sister, or the youth who was so full of promise and for whom his tutors had predicted a great future. He was no longer the young man who had come to court full of expectations about the career he would carve out, who saw his family’s status rise as his younger sister found favour with the King, and who enjoyed the kind of advancement that other young courtiers envied, who was appointed to the Privy Council, and trusted with the role of ambassador at a young age, and who enjoyed the honour of being the King’s brother-in-law and the Princess’ uncle.

George wasn’t an old man, not yet, but he still seemed years older than he should.

After Anne’s death, he was more serious than before, diligently attending to his duties as a member of the Privy Council, making an effort to maintain a cordial relationship with his wife, and spending time with Elizabeth, playing with her and telling her about her mother, both stories about Anne as a child and stories about how much she had loved her beautiful daughter.

It seemed that George was determined to see to it that the little princess would never forget that she was as much of a Boleyn as she was a Tudor, and that she would be proud to be Anne’s child.

They had little to do with one another, outside of shared duties, and when they spoke, they restricted their conversation to superficial issues. 

He never took George to task for his childlessness, reminding him that he was growing older and that he and his wife should be raising their family by now. He had already had to lose Anne because she had no living son, and much as he would have liked a Boleyn grandson, he didn’t want to push George away from him over the issue, knowing as he did that, if his son was unwilling to at least try to get a son on his wife, there was no way that he would be able to force him, and arguing with him would only serve to drive a wedge between them.

He had had to cast Mary out of his life and to bury Anne.

He couldn’t lose George too.

He only had one child left.

If George ever wondered about the timing of Anne’s murder, wondered why her killer would have chosen to strike at a moment when she was weak and near defeat, when it was all but guaranteed that the King would cast her aside without them needing to move against her, rather than when she was strong, and able to pose a credible threat to enemies like the Princess Dowager, the Lady Mary, the Imperial faction and the Seymour family, he never said so, nor did he ever remark on the irony that, though the Boleyns once thought that their fortunes would fall with Anne when she fell out of favour with the King, they were as secure in his favour after her death as at the height of the King’s love for her, and continued to be the first family at court.

George had never shared Anne’s steel.

He might be charming and bright but there were some things that he could never have the stomach for.

If the truth was too monstrous for him to bear, George would shut his eyes and do his best not to allow himself to believe that it could possibly be true.

Maybe George was the lucky one.

* * *

Although the King hoped and prayed for a son from his new Queen, his prayers went unanswered and their union remained childless.

Nobody would have dared to say so but there were few who blamed the Queen for the lack of a new Tudor heir. The King had had little luck siring healthy children when he was a young man, and thought himself Katherine’s husband. Elizabeth was the only strong, healthy child he could boast, while Mary was a thin, sickly young woman, though sadly not sickly enough to die. Out of all the King’s mistresses, only one of them ever presented him with a bastard, and who could be sure that Lady Blount had spoken truthfully when she claimed that her son was the King’s child? Perhaps the boy was her husband’s, or her son by a secret lover, and she hoped to secure a grand title and glorious future for the boy by allowing the King to believe that he was the father.

Had he been ten years younger, and as strong and healthy as he was in the days when he was hailed as the handsomest Prince in Christendom, the King would undoubtedly have blamed his wife for their empty nursery, ignoring the fact that his own history of siring healthy children was poor, and sought to set her aside so that he could marry another woman, one who could give him the fine, healthy sons that England needed. However, even a King was subject to the ravages of age, and he seemed to have accepted that he would have no better luck with another woman.

Now that his youth was a thing of the past, the King seemed to crave peace in his marriage and family life, so he enjoyed a very cordial relationship with the Queen rather than shunning her for her barrenness. They would never be passionately in love, but they could live as friends.

In some ways, this marriage was perhaps the happiest the King had enjoyed.

For himself, he was pleased to see that the King’s second true marriage was childless.

Anne wanted so badly for Elizabeth to be Queen, and he would have liked her to know that he had seen to it that her child would sit on the throne. He had to believe that, when Elizabeth became Queen, Anne would know it, and would know that her sacrifice was worth it.

However, when there was no child born of his new marriage, the King didn’t just shower Elizabeth with affection and cherish her all the more, he opened his heart to his other daughter too.

As much as it pleased him to see Anne’s child cherished, as she ought to be, it infuriated him when he saw the King show favour to Mary, seeming to forget the long years the wretched girl spent defying him, and he was particularly apprehensive when he heard him say that she had gone too long without a husband, and that it was past time for her to be married.

It was common knowledge at court that the Lady Mary longed to marry and to have children of her own but he knew that this was something that could never be allowed.

If Katherine’s bastard was permitted to marry, she could have children by her new husband, _sons_.

Much as the King loved and cherished Elizabeth, as defensive as he was of her claim to the title of Princess of England, and as proud as he was of her many accomplishments, that would not last if the Lady Mary presented him with a couple of plump, healthy grandsons, at least one of whom was bound to be named Henry, to curry favour with his grandfather. The King would surely dote on the brats, seeing in them the sons that he was denied, and loving them for it. The last thing he wanted was for the King to decide that he would rather see the Lady Mary’s eldest boy as his successor instead of Elizabeth, thinking that a male heir – even a toddler born of his bastard daughter – was a better choice as England’s next ruler than his lawful heiress.

If the King wished it done, an Act of Parliament could vest the succession in the Lady Mary’s sons, depriving Elizabeth of her inheritance in favour of her nephews.

He made sure that the Lady Mary was never allowed to marry.

He had some support on the Privy Council now.

He and George might not enjoy a good relationship as father and son but they were united in their desire to protect Elizabeth’s position and inheritance.

George knew as well as he did that there could be no question of the Lady Mary being allowed to marry, gaining herself an ally should she try to seize her sister’s throne or becoming the mother of sons who might charm their grandfather into rearranging the succession for their benefit.

Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had loved Anne since the days of their childhood, when he and his sister were frequent visitors at Hever, would protect little Elizabeth out of reverence for Anne’s memory, and could be counted on to employ his silver tongue to not only persuade the King that a match proposed for the Lady Mary was not in England’s best interests, but also to persuade the King that he was the one who came up with the objections to the match rather than being persuaded to refuse it by the arguments of another man. In the end, the King was convinced that he was against the match from the beginning, and that Wyatt merely agreed with him.

Thomas Cromwell might not be loyal to the Boleyn family, despite their help in advancing his career, but he believed in the reformation of the Church and knew better than anybody that the interests of the reformed Church would not be served if the Lady Mary was ever allowed to wield power, either in her own right or as Regent for her sons. Lady Mary was as staunch a Catholic as ever lived, like her mother before her, and she would be zealous in returning England to submission to Rome. For her, it would not just be a matter of faith; the Bishop of Rome had bowed to the power of the Emperor and declared Katherine to be the King’s true wife and the issue of their union legitimate. She was certain to want to repudiate her mother and to declare herself legitimate and, disloyal bastard that she was, she would be prepared to violate the Oath she swore and rob the little girl whose position she swore to uphold of her rightful title in order to do it.

Cromwell knew as well as he did that, even if there was no alternative but that the Lady Mary be received with court as the King’s daughter, they must see to it that she remain a spinster.

As a wife and mother, she was a threat to Elizabeth and to the Reformation but, if she was left to live out her childbearing years without a husband or hope of one, the damage she could do would be limited. Even those who supported her and believed that she was wronged when she was stripped of her royal status and denied any place in the line of succession, would surely rather see a healthy young lady, ripe to marry and bear children, as their Queen than a sickly woman old before her time, an old woman who would never be able to give England an heir.

It was almost a pity that they had seen to the suppression of the religious houses, or the Lady Mary could have been sent to live out her days in a convent, where she could pose no threat.

Since that was not an option, they must condemn her to the life of a perpetual spinster, a lonely woman whose dreams of having a family of her own must go unfulfilled.

After all the trouble she had caused Anne, she deserved no better.

It was easy enough to accomplish.

However pleased the King might be to have his eldest daughter back in his life again, he was far too proud to ever pretend that he was wrong to say that she was illegitimate, no matter how fond of her he might be and no matter how much it would mean to her to be allowed to call herself a Princess once more, instead of accepting that she was fortunate to be acknowledged as a daughter of the King and permitted the title of Lady. There was no way that he would pretend that Katherine was his true wife or even that there might have been an alternative to exposing the Lady Mary as a bastard, some way that he could be free while the girl retained her royal titles.

When he had killed men – including such revered men as Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More – for refusing to swear the Oath that Elizabeth was the rightful heir, supplanting Mary, he could scarcely say that Mary could actually have claimed legitimacy and, as such, the right to be first in line for the throne ahead of her young half-sister, and that the executions need not have happened.

He would never love the Lady Mary enough to say that he was wrong, for her sake.

This made it easy to ensure that the King never agreed to any of the royal matches that the Emperor proposed for his cousin. The King knew as well as anybody that, if the Lady Mary was married to a husband of the Emperor’s choosing, it was all but inevitable that, as soon as the King died, if not before, he would support them in a bid to claim the English throne, knowing that he would have lasting allies in a couple who owed their throne to him.

It was a little more difficult when the Queen brought her cousin to England, and supported a match between him and the Lady Mary. She arranged for them to meet, and she praised the young man to the King, assuring him that he was handsome, kind, clever and loyal.

Philip of Bavaria ruled a minor dukedom, albeit a prosperous one, and although he had royal blood in his veins, he would never rule a great kingdom. As he was of royal birth, the King was willing to consider allowing him to marry the Lady Mary, of whose hand he considered the noblemen of England unworthy, despite her bastard status, but Duke Philip would never be so powerful that he could possibly hope to muster an army to put Mary on the throne when the King died. Even if Mary bore Duke Philip sons, the King was unlikely to ever see them, so the threat they posed to Elizabeth would be greatly diminished, next to the threat than English-born boys might pose.

He might have encouraged the union, thinking that it would be worth it if the Lady Mary left the court and the country, leaving Elizabeth to reclaim all of the King’s love, except for one thing.

He could see that the Lady Mary liked Duke Philip, and that she wanted to marry him.

In time, she might easily have grown to love the man, and enjoyed her life as his wife.

Why should the Lady Mary be allowed to be happy, when Anne was denied happiness?

Why should the King see his elder daughter married to a man she loved, when the man Anne loved proved to be so unworthy of the faith she placed in him?

They didn’t deserve it.

It was more difficult to see to it that the King rejected this match than it was to dissuade him from agreeing to greater, and more threatening, matches. He couldn't gently nudge the King towards the belief that the Emperor was hoping to manipulate him into agreeing to the match, not when the Queen was the one to propose it and when the Emperor was likely to be none too pleased about the prospect of his cousin becoming the wife of a duke. He couldn't convince him that Duke Philip could one day pose a threat to him. The King was also a sentimental man, who was touched by the idea of a love match, and who was pleased to think that the Lady Mary would be happy.

He focused his attention on the marriage contract, doing his best to guide the King's decisions and to ensure that the dowry offered would be low, while the demands for Lady Mary's income and household during the marriage, and her jointure if she was widowed were unreasonably high, playing on the King's pride to ensure that he would be satisfied with nothing less for his daughter. He also made certain that there was no way that the King would consent to the marriage without Duke Philip's formal, written consent that Lady Mary was a bastard, and that, as the children of a bastard, any issue born of their union would never be eligible to claim the English throne.

Although Duke Philip was sincere in his wish to marry Mary, the long list of conditions he was presented with eventually led him to abandon his suit.

Maybe he thought that the King's harsh stance with regard to the marriage negotiations indicated that he had no intention of allowing the match.

Maybe he came to the conclusion that he could do better in a bride than a royal bastard with no claim to a throne, and a relatively small dowry.

Either way, it didn't matter.

What mattered was that Duke Philip left England as he had arrived, as a bachelor.

What mattered was that the Lady Mary saw another chance at marriage disappear before her eyes.

He heard that the Lady Mary claimed that she never expected or wished to marry Duke Philip, as he was a Lutheran while she was a Catholic, but whenever he saw her around the court in the weeks that followed Duke Philip's departure, he could see that she was lying. While she was careful to control her expression before others, doing her best not to allow anybody to see what she was thinking, she couldn't disguise the pain in her eyes, and they betrayed her heartbreak.

It pleased him to see it.

* * *

Although Masses were frequently said for the repose of her soul, every year, on the anniversary of Anne's death, a special service was held in her memory in the Chapel Royal and, while the court didn't go into formal mourning for her, it was always a solemn place around that time.

In the weeks leading up to the anniversary, and the weeks immediately following it, the King was always somber and distant, remembering the wife he had once loved with such a passion and who was snatched away from him so suddenly and so violently, and remembering that the murder was never caught, nor were those who had stood to benefit from Anne's death, any one of whom might have been the one who sent an assassin to invade her bedchamber, and break her neck while she slept, unaware of the danger. He was in no mood for the revels that he usually took pleasure in and, while he never said that he expected his courtiers to follow his lead, they knew that it was best to refrain from their usual sports and merriment, in deference to their sovereign's grief.

God help any man who might be thought to be rejoicing over Anne's death!

Every year at this time, the King was cold and distant towards those who were known not to have had any love for Anne, with the worst of his hostility reserved for those who were her enemies.

Such people were always wise to avoid bringing themselves to his attention at that time.

The Imperial ambassador usually had the sense to keep to his apartments, if he could not find some urgent errand that he must undertake on his master's behalf.

The King said little during those weeks but he could be seen watching the faces of Anne's enemies with keen eyes, scrutinising every aspect of their expression. It was as though he thought that the killer, or those who had set him his task, might betray their guilt with a word or a look, even after all these years, and that he would finally know who had taken Anne from him.

He wondered how much of the King's behaviour was due to his grief for Anne, and how much was due to his frustration and anger over the fact that, despite investigations into those with a motive to murder Anne, despite quizzing servants to find out if any of them saw a suspicious person loitering near the Queen's apartments or trying to slip away from the palace without being seen on the night of the murder, he was no nearer to learning the truth than he was on the terrible morning when he found her lying still and cold in the bed they once shared.

It had to make the King uneasy to know that somebody was able to slip into his palace, murder his Queen and escape without anybody being any the wiser.

Even the Lady Mary was treated coldly during the time of remembrance, as if the King had forgotten that she was now restored to his favour, forgotten that it was several years since the Lady Mary had abandoned her treasonous claim to the title of Princess, allowing him to welcome her into his life once more and grant her a place of honour at his court. There was never a trace of the man who prided himself on being a kind and generous father to his once estranged daughter.

The Lady Mary knew better than to refuse to attend the services dedicated to Anne, and could always be seen in the Chapel Royal, praying.

No doubt she considered Anne's soul to be in particular need of prayers for her salvation, although she might also have been praying for her mother. He could imagine that it grieved the Lady Mary that her mother had not lived just a month longer, so that she might have lived long enough to learn of Anne's death. Knowing the stubbornness of the Princess Dowager, and her unwillingness to believe that it was the King's wish to set her aside, she would probably have thought that Anne's death would mean her restoration as Queen.

Had the Spanish woman not chosen that time to die, Anne might still be alive.

The King couldn't make a move to rid himself of Anne while her predecessor lived, not unless he wanted to be bombarded with people urging him to take Katherine back and restore her daughter, something that he would never willingly consent to. Better for him to keep Anne, who was still young and healthy enough to be able to hope to give him a son, than to restore Katherine, who was not only long past her childbearing years but with whom he would never be able to feel at ease again, after all that had happened between them.

The extra time could have given Anne the chance to bear the Prince who would make her safe.

During the time of remembrance, the mystery of Anne's murder was a common subject of conversation at court.

Even though everybody knew that it was extremely unlikely that her killer would be caught at this late stage, as there could be no evidence linking anybody to Anne's death, people still speculated about it. Different courtiers had different theories about who could have been responsible, and how they might have managed to sneak into the palace, and into the Queen's apartment without being detected. Opinion was divided on the subject of which of Anne's enemies was responsible, whether she was killed by an agent of the Emperor or the Bishop of Rome, or if her life was snuffed out by somebody who had hoped that, with Anne out of the way, the King could be persuaded to restore the Lady Mary as his heiress.

The Lady Mary sometimes attracted speculative looks.

Nobody seriously imagined that the girl might have been the mastermind behind the plot to murder Anne but they were not about to dismiss the possibility that one of her supporters had killed Anne for her sake, or even that she might have been told in advance but chose to remain silent, in the hope that the plot would be successful.

It amused him to watch her reaction to the speculation she overheard, knowing that she probably considered it offensive that anybody should imagine that she would do such a thing - as though the granddaughter of Isabella and Ferdinand, not to mention Henry VII, would not resort to murder if that was the only way that she could claim a crown to which she felt herself entitled! - and that she might also be frightened by the rumours, afraid that her father might hear of them and think that there could be some truth to them, that the daughter he had graciously forgiven for her past defiance, and to whom he had shown more honour than she, as a bastard, had the right to expect from him, could be a murderess.

And then one evening, the Lady Mary met his gaze, and her reaction was no longer amusing.

Thomas Wyatt had composed a poem in Anne's honour, with Mark Smeaton setting it to music, and after a solemn meal, eaten mostly in silence, with those who spoke limiting themselves to the subject of Anne, her virtues and the tragedy of her early death, the song was played for the court, who listened to the haunting music in silence, more than a few of them thinking it prudent to be seen to dab dry eyes with handkerchiefs. Tears rolled down the King's cheeks, and the Queen took his hand in hers sympathetically, feeling no jealousy for a ghost's hold on her husband's heart.

As a rule, the Lady Mary had a place of honour on the table at the dais, as a member of the royal family, but during the period of mourning, she was relegated to a place at one of the lower tables, where the court sat, as though her father considered it a slight to Anne's memory that Mary, who had refused to accept her in life, should be treated with honour while Anne was mourned.  
She was seated almost directly in front of him, allowing him to watch her reaction, and when she turned to look up at him, he would swear that he saw understanding dawn in her eyes.

The wretched girl was thinking back to the time of Anne's death, and remembering how matters had stood then.

She was remembering that, shortly after her mother's death, Anne had miscarried of the son who would have been her saviour, the son whose birth would have convinced the King that his decision to set the Spanish woman aside, and expose her daughter as the bastard she was, was the right choice for him and for England, the son who would have ensured that his mother remained a beloved wife and Queen for the rest of her days, never again having to worry that she would lose her husband's love to whatever worthless wench sought to steal him from her.

She was remembering the rumours that the King fancied himself in love with Mistress Seymour, that the creature wished to see her restored as a princess, and that, with the Spanish woman dead, it would be a relatively easy matter for the King to set Anne aside and raise the Seymour wench in her place.

She was remembering that Anne had died at a time when her position was so weak that those who sought to see her replaced or to see the Lady Mary restored could simply have waited for the King to set her aside, and remembering that, instead of benefiting her enemies, Anne's murder had protected her family and her friends. Because Anne did not live to be a threat to the King's wish to be rid of her so that he might remarry, her daughter did not suffer the loss of her title, and her family were allowed to retain the honours they enjoyed while she was in favour.

She was remembering who had _truly_ stood to benefit from Anne's murder.

She _knew_ who had killed Anne.

* * *

She would never be able to prove it, of course.

She would never even be able to voice the accusation.

She knew as well as he did that, if she tried to allege that, rather than being murdered by one of her many enemies, Anne had died at the hands of her father, the King would never believe her. The King would never willingly accept that, before Anne's death, he was waiting to be provided with an excuse to be rid of her, and that a member of her family might have seen the benefit of ensuring that Anne was disposed of in a way that did not expose her family and supporters to the risk of being dragged down with her. The King would accept his denial as soon as he spoke the words, if he even bothered to insult him with the suggestion and, if anything, the Lady Mary would face his wrath for daring to suggest something so preposterous, for seeking to undermine Anne's father, the grandfather of the future Queen of England.

If she wasn't sent to the Tower for it, she would be banished from court in disgrace, left to rot in some crumbling country manor.

She knew that as well as he did, and would hold her peace on the subject rather than exposing herself to her father's anger, but she knew.

She knew, and he did not want her to have that knowledge.

* * *

When the suggestion of allowing the Lady Mary a place in the line of succession was first broached, he knew what he had to do.

He had been steeling himself for the moment when the suggestion was made, and the King did not immediately dismiss the idea with a sharply worded admonition to the speaker to remember that the Lady Mary was a bastard with no claim to the throne, since it became apparent that there was to be no child of the King's second lawful marriage, and he was prepared.

He knew better than to think that the King would be content to allow his nephew to be second in line to the throne after Elizabeth while any child of his blood was excluded from the succession.

The King would rather see the daughter he declared illegitimate, and who was bound to return the country to the Bishop of Rome, sitting on the throne than to allow his sister's line to rule England.

He was sure that there were quite a few members of the Privy Council who didn't know any better than to expect him to protest against the idea of Katherine's daughter being restored to the succession. They probably thought that he would have no more sense than to argue that the Lady Mary had no right to have a hope of succeeding to the throne, risking the King's anger if he took umbrage at the suggestion that he did not have the right to include his illegitimate daughter in the line of succession if it pleased him to do so, or that the fact that his blood flowed in Mary's veins was not reason enough to think her worthy to be Queen of England one day, or for her children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren to have the right to succeed to the throne, rather than the descendants of his sister, if Elizabeth's bloodline died out.

He was not such a fool that he would argue openly against the King's chosen course of action.

Instead, he surprised some of his fellow Council members by accepting the suggestion calmly, even expressing the opinion that it was wise to make further provision for the succession, as though he could have no qualms about the prospect of Katherine's daughter becoming Queen. 

It did not surprise them when he cautioned them to ensure that the new Act of Succession was drafted in such a way that it would be made clear that Elizabeth was the true, legitimate Princess of England and the rightful heir to the throne, while Mary, as the King's illegitimate daughter, was allowed a place in the succession after her half-sister. Even the King agreed that such measures were prudent; it was not his goal to undermine Elizabeth's position in favour of Mary, after all, only to provide himself with another heir of his blood, should another be needed.

Outwardly, he appeared to be content with the arrangement, deeming it no threat to his granddaughter's interests, or those of the rest of his family.

Inwardly, he knew that permitting the Lady Mary a place in the line of succession exposed Elizabeth and the Boleyns to grave risks.

He would be a fool to expect the Lady Mary, who was certain to persist in her belief that she was the Princess of Wales and true heir to the throne, unjustly deprived of her place, to be content with the remote possibility that she might one day sit on the throne if Elizabeth, a perfectly healthy child who was so much younger than she was, died childless before Mary did. The wretched girl would refuse to see that she was being already honoured beyond her desserts, and would aim for more, even if it meant turning a blind eye while her supporters plotted Elizabeth's murder.

He would never allow that to happen.

* * *

It was a perfect poison, or so he was assured by the man who created it, and sold it to him at a high price.

It was odourless, tasteless, and left no signs of its use on the body. Even if an autopsy was performed, none of the organs would be discoloured to indicate poison.

It would take at least a day, possibly two, for the Lady Mary to begin to feel unwell, and her symptoms would mimic those of a pestilence, ensuring that her servants would be reluctant to com too close to her, just as any physicians the King sent to tend his daughter would be reluctant to perform an autopsy, for fear of releasing the contagion, even if they did not accept the evidence of their eyes at face value, and conclude that she was the victim of a sudden, virulent illness. 

She would have to be buried quickly, without ceremony, so the disease was not given the chance to spread and claim more victims. 

Prayers would be said in thanksgiving that the sickness confined itself to one place.

The King's fear of illness was strong enough to ensure that he would not risk his health by travelling to the girl's bedside to see her once last time, allowing her the opportunity to poison his mind against the Boleyn family, to make him regret disinheriting her in favour of Elizabeth or to make him regret setting her mother aside to marry Anne. He might be fond of his elder daughter, and of a sentimental nature, but he knew better than to risk his own health. 

If anything, he would ride in the opposite direction, as far and as fast as he could.

The Lady Mary would simply die of her illness, and be all but forgotten in time, while Elizabeth went on to be the great Queen that her mother would have wanted her be.

A kitchen servant in Mary's household was glad of the heavy purse of money he was provided with in exchange for adding the poison both to Mary's food and to some of the food parcels that she distributed to poor families on her estates, and to some of the food served to the members of her household. No true pestilence would confine itself to a single victim, after all.

When the man came to claim the second instalment of his reward from the stranger who had hired him, he learned that the other half of his reward was a dagger to the heart.

He made sure that he was nowhere near Hunsdon when it happened.

Even if somebody suspected him of involvement, they would never be able to prove that he was to blame for the Lady Mary's death, or even that her death was unnatural.

He asked for, and received permission to pay a visit to Hatfield, where Elizabeth was staying for the summer months, leaving it to one of the few men in his service who had his full trust to arrange matters, and he was with his young granddaughter when she was brought the news.

Elizabeth wept in his arms when she learned of her half-sister's death, her grief palpable.

It was only with difficulty that he managed to stay patient while he consoled her, saying all the appropriate things about how it was God's will, and how the Lady Mary was now at peace, when he wanted to tell Elizabeth that Mary's death was a blessing for her, one that would make her hold on the throne much more secure, when her time came. Had Mary been allowed to live, she would have been Elizabeth's bane, and he was sure that a time would have come when Elizabeth was left with no choice but to send her to the scaffold.

By acting now, he had spared her the need to send the Spanish woman's bastard to the scaffold herself, and protected from the anger some of her subjects would feel when she did.

He couldn't understand why Elizabeth couldn't see what he had done for her.

The next time he saw the King, he offered his condolences on the death of the Lady Mary, gently reminding him that he too knew what it was like to lose a daughter.

Priam had lost his daughter too, as was only fitting.

* * *

With the Lady Mary dead, Elizabeth's succession was assured, especially when her Brandon cousin died, leaving only a pair of toddling daughters to inherit his claim to the throne.

In his heart, the King knew that he would not live to see Elizabeth reach her majority, and he made his arrangements accordingly, choosing a Regency Council to rule during her minority, and making arrangements for a smooth succession. George was to be Lord Protector, as the King felt that his daughter's uncle, a man of younger years, would be a better choice to rule on her behalf than her grandfather, though he saw to it that he also had a place on the Council.

At one time, he would have been angry to be passed over, even in favour of his son.

Now, he could accept it, even though the King was likely to further ennoble the man ho would govern his country and guard his daughter until the day came when she was ready to take power for herself. He knew that George would do his best for Elizabeth, and that the Regency Council was made up of men who could be trusted to support Elizabeth, and who would work with the Boleyns rather than trying to oust them so that they might control the young Queen and her country.

In a way, it was almost a relief to think that his life might be more peaceful, while George shouldered the burdens of state.

It had been such a long road to bring their family this far, to carry out Anne's wishes and see to it that Elizabeth became Queen, that he could look forward to a time when he might rest.

Elizabeth was a girl of thirteen when her father died but it was already apparent that God had seen to it that she was bestowed with the gifts she would need to be a great monarch, perhaps the greatest monarch that England, if not Christendom, had ever known, eclipsing her ancestors.

When he saw Elizabeth's coronation, when he saw St. Edward's crown gently placed on her head, as it was placed on her mother's head fourteen years earlier, and the sceptres of the sovereign placed in her outstretched hands, he knew that all he and Anne had done, and all they had sacrificed, was worth it.

Once Elizabeth was Queen, he knew in his heart that Anne was now at peace.

He knew that he had kept his promise to her.

* * *

_Anne's apartment was silent, dimly lit by candles and by the fire that was burning low in her bedchamber. Shadows danced on the walls as the candle flames flickered._

_None of her ladies had stayed to attend her, in case she needed them, despite the fact that she was still weak and sick after her miscarriage and might need their help, or for one of them to run to fetch a physician to aid her if her condition worsened, even though swift medical assistance could mean the difference between her life and her death if she began to bleed again, or if an infection set in and her body began to burn with a fever. She was abandoned to her fate._

_They had all deserted her, like rats fleeing from a sinking ship, forgetting all she had done for them now that it was in their best interests to curry favour with the creature who looked certain to be England's new Queen before any of them were much older._

_Even the corridors around her apartment were deserted when he walked there, without a groom or sentry in sight._

_She was dozing lightly when he entered her bedchamber but she stirred at his approach, pushing herself into a sitting position, albeit with some difficulty. He reached out to steady her, helping to position her more comfortably. She had to be in pain after her miscarriage, especially if it was true that she had fought it, making a Herculean effort to keep the child rooted in her womb._

_"I lost the baby, Father." Her voice was soft as she made her confession, her eyes full of apprehension, as though she expected that he would scold her for it._

_"I know, sweetheart. It's not your fault." Or, at the very least, not entirely her fault._

_Whatever about her first miscarriage, which might have been the result of carelessness on her part, she did not deserve to shoulder all of the blame for this tragedy. Had the King not been such a fool as to take Mistress Seymour on his knee when they were in an unlocked room, and had Mistress Seymour not accepted the advances of a married man when she knew that his wife might enter the room at any moment, this miscarriage would never have happened. Anne didn't help matters by flying into a passion instead of ignoring Mistress Seymour, as he had counselled her to, but the loss of her child was more than enough of a punishment for her mistake without him needing to chastise her any further for it._

_"He's going to get rid of me," Anne told him bleakly. "He said that he could see that God would not grant us male children. He has given up on me, and on our marriage. He wants Mistress Seymour now, and I'm in their way. What are we going to do?"_

_He reached out and stroked her cheek with a gentle finger but her pain could no longer be soothed by her father's caress, as it could when she was a little girl._

_"I have a plan." Even in the near darkness of the room, he could see her eyes light up at his words. "There may be a way that we can save the family. What would you do to protect Elizabeth?"_

_She didn't hesitate before answering. "Anything. What do you need me to do?"_

_Did she remember the story of Iphigenia, and the discussion they had had when she was a little girl?_

_Did she understand that, while the rest of the family could be protected, there was no saving her?_

_Did she understand what he was asking of her?_

_He had to believe that she did._

_He didn't doubt that she would willingly lay down her life for her child._

_Despite the troubles that resulted from a daughter being born in place of the son she needed, he knew that Anne loved Elizabeth with all her heart, and would do anything to protect her._

_"I need you to leave this in my hands." Suicide was a mortal sin, and he wouldn't ask that of her., just as he wouldn't ask her to voice her consent aloud. "Do you trust me?" She nodded slowly, and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead, then her hand, grateful for her courage._

_Anne truly was the bravest and strongest of his children._

_Her daughter would one day be a force to be reckoned with._

_His gaze fell on the bottle beside her bed, next to a glass goblet, and he picked it up. A quick examination of the label confirmed what it was: poppy syrup. Doctor Linacre must have left it with her, in case the pain became too much and she needed to take a dose to allow her to sleep, though the physician had undoubtedly expected that one of her ladies would be the one to measure the dose for her, instead of leaving her to manage it by herself. The bottle was a large one, and although the dose he tipped into the goblet must have been at least twice, if not three times as strong as a woman Anne's size required, it would not be noticeably depleted._

_"You must be in pain, sweetheart. You need to rest. Drink this." He told her, smiling despite himself when she pulled a face before obeying him, accepting the dose as the lesser evil next to the physical and emotional pain she was enduring. She was no better about taking medicine as an adult than she was as a small child. "Now lie down, and go to sleep. It will be better in the morning, I promise. I won't let anybody steal the throne from Elizabeth without a fight."_

_Anne smiled but her smile did not reach her eyes. Maybe she didn't believe that he would be able to protect Elizabeth, and ensure that, if it was possible, she would be Queen one day._

_"Thank you, Papa." Her voice was sluggish with sleep, and she could barely keep her eyes open as the poppy syrup lulled her into a deep, dreamless sleep._

_He waited, watching her, until he knew that the medicine had taken full effect._

_Anne didn't stir when he grasped her head in his hand and, after taking a deep breath to fortify himself for what he must do, twisted her head as quickly and as forcefully as he could, until he felt her neck snap._

_Anne's part in her family's struggle was over._

_She would never have to bear the shame and pain of being set aside while another woman took her place, and she would never have to see her child disinherited and shamed because her mother had failed to give the King what he wanted most from her._

_Anne was free._


End file.
